Happenings from last night and the Sunday preview at the WSOP:
The semifinals of the $10,000 Headsup World Championship have now been set, even if it appeared Lyle Berman didn\’t want that to happen. His round of 16 match with David Williams would eventually take over 5 hours, before Berman eventually took it down. That match went so long that the tournament staff decided to start the quarterfinal matches unaffected by the outcome. Those winners were Vanessa Selbst, Jonathan Jaffe, and Kenny Tran. Lyle would face Alec Torelli in their quarterfinal match, and true to form, this match would take over 4 hours with Torelli triumphant in the end. So here\’s the semifinals that meet the ESPN360 cameras:
Vanessa Selbst v Alec Torelli
Kenny Tran v Jonathan Jaffe
Other action from yesterday at the jump:
The other final table that was still in action at the WSOP last night concluded with yet another Full Tilt Pro taking home a bracelet. Max Pescatori took down his 2nd career bracelet as winner of the $2,500 Pot Limit Holdem/Pot Limit Omaha event, beating Kyle Kloeckner heads-up.
The $1,500 Razz final table was established earlier this morning. Unfortunately, Tom Schneider won\’t be a part of it but he did finish in 12th for just over $10,000. The final table does have its share of unknowns and veteran gamblers however, as shown below:
Seat 1: Chris Viox 359,500
Seat 2: Joseph Michael 155,000
Seat 3: Archie \’The Greek\’ Karas 113,000
Seat 4: Brandon Leeds 206,500
Seat 5: Chris Klodnicki 105,000
Seat 6: Mike Wattel 74,000
Seat 7: Mark Tenner 108,500
Seat 8: Barry Greenstein 243,000
Archie Karas\’ story is definitely the most interesting of the group, turning $50 in $40,000,000 and then back to $0 in one of the greatest runs in gambling history. Tom Sexton did a 10-part article with Karas for Pokernews, and the articles can also be found at Sexton\’s site, starting here.
In Saturday Day 1 action:
The $1,500 NL event finished in the money with 224 left (270 got paid. The end of day 1 chip leader was, ESPN.com writer and radio show host Bernard Lee. Other notable names at the top include Joe Awada, Court Harrington, Jean-Robert Bellande, Mark Seif and Humberto Brenes.
The $5,000 PLO w/rebuys event drew a field of 152, with a whopping 483 rebuys to create a prize pool of over $3,000,000. Of the remaining 56, only 18 will get paid. Emmanuel Sebag is the current chip leader, but several big names are looming including Phil Hellmuth, David Benyamine, Erick Lindgren, Eli Elezra, Daniel Negreanu, and Mike Sexton. They get back into the game around 3pm today.
Sunday brings us past the halfway point of the Series with two more tournaments. Noon starts the $3,000 NL event, which drew a field of 827 with Shankar Pillai winning the bracelet. The 5pm tournament is another $10,000 World Championship debut, this time it\’s Limit Holdem. As usual, a smaller field is expected of the elite (and those that think they\’re elite) to win a bracelet of their very own.
More updating from me later today…